Our double award win at The Quality Food Awards

It's been a wee while but now the dust has very much settled, we wanted to talk a bit about our experience at The Quality Food Awards.

We were equally stunned and joyous when finding out that we were shortlisted for the Condiments category and also for the larger Small Producer of The Year award. For our tiny company just having the shortlist was great for us. It gave us a nice thing to shout about for a while.

When the awards ceremony was getting closer, I was deliberating about going for a while. Money, tickets etc. I then realised that this is what it's all about, this is the fun stuff. When you're in the weeds of it all, it's easy to forget that you should jump on opportunities that celebrates your hard work. We might not get shortlisted for another award so we might as well go and enjoy it. 

The likes of Aldi, Waitrose, Lidl, Iceland and Asda were all over every category, so even though we felt we had a chance, it was just as likely that we wouldn't win. But hey, it'll be a nice experience for YC and family to be at an awards ceremony, where they could experience her chilli oil getting recognised and getting some praise.

When the chilli oil was read out as the joint gold winner in the Condiments category, it was quite mad but also very lovely, Yok Chan was very very pleased.

And that's what I mean when I say that's what this is all about. One of the main points of all this, is to celebrate our parents and cultures. Even if this all goes to sh*t and we call it a day one day, at least there was a moment where mum's creation was recognised with an award and she got to experience it. With all the work and graft that's been put in, she can say that she went to a ceremony with her family, where her chilli oil was so good that it won an award, against all of these heavyweights.

It didn't stop there though. For the Small Producer of The Year category, we were positive we weren't going to get anything, as there were a lot more brands shortlisted. But we decided to stay anyway. You never know right. 

So when it was announced that our product was awarded as 'Highly Commended', it was genuinely surreal. I think I'd had too many beers at this point so I didn't really properly process what this meant. It was also funny as Yok Chan started walking up to the stage thinking we'd won.

We were eventually told that even though we weren't the winners, we had earned this award for standing out as a noteworthy producer in the category, and that this was quite a big deal. 

I have to admit that we were still reeling from the previous win, so the second accolade went over our heads a bit. I only really realised the significance of this second award when the admin stuff had kicked in a few days later. In my head it's a bit like when Harry gets commended for outstanding moral fibre in Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire. OK maybe not.

It's still a bit mad that we won in one category and then received a special award in a larger category. But two nominations and two wins. I guess the message with all this, at the very least is, we should keep going. 

We're very grateful to The Quality Food Awards and everyone that was involved for making this moment happen. Most importantly, mum got to celebrate her creation, her product, her face and name(!) being commended with two food awards.

To everyone that's supported us or helped us along the way, you're part of this too.

You can see the full list of winners here.

Big love 

MP